


I Have Been Reliably Informed That My Heart Will Go On

by doctorxxxmaximus



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Titanic (1997)
Genre: M/M, Mystrade (suggested), Titanic - Freeform, jimlock, some "not sure if sex scene" until later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-21
Updated: 2012-06-11
Packaged: 2017-11-04 01:29:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/388142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorxxxmaximus/pseuds/doctorxxxmaximus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <b>New chapter posted June 11, 2012!</b>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Star-studded fic that casts the characters of BBC Sherlock as those from Titanic.  Somehow I have found a place for almost every Sherlock character.  Somehow.</p><p>June 1912:  A five-million-dollar diamond is missing, and Sherlock Holmes is the only person who may be able to locate it.  In order to do so, however, he must rehash painful memories from eighty-four days ago.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>Lestrade glanced back at Anderson, then waved him over with a small grimace.  Anderson approached, unrolled a very familiar piece of cardstock, and anchored it with his fingertips on the edges of the wood table in front of Sherlock.</i><br/>It was John’s drawing.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>His chest suddenly felt very empty.  Cold.  Sherlock quickly composed himself and waved the picture away.  “Not exactly what you’d call evidence.”  His voice sharper now.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Distant Memories

7 June, 1912.  Half past two in the morning.

 

It had been eighty-four days.  Exactly eighty-four days since the Unsinkable Ship was sucked into the freezing waters of the North Atlantic by the force of its own sheer mass.  The White Star Line’s latest and most luxurious vessel, done in by a lump of ice in the middle of nowhere.

 

And the circles under Sherlock’s eyes only grew darker.  He had been summoned to a makeshift police hideaway, somewhere along the Hudson.  Two and a half months—he was learning the ins and outs of the New York streets, but but his interest in New York was fading fast, so he saw little point in knowing every street, but from the smell of things, it was a warehouse near the fish market.

 

New York was very different from London, and yet quite the same.  The police carried guns—peashooters, but they would inflict greater damage from further away than an English bobby’s truncheon.  Everyone who didn’t have a brassy, inquisitive dislike of those immigrants freshly arrived to their city was a quiet foreigner who kept his head down and shuffled around large, heavy items with weary eyes and tired hands.

 

The similarities were just as striking.  Dirty streets, homeless orphans selling flowers or holding grubby, grasping, knuckle-gloved hands at the gentlemen who passed.  The smell in the poorer areas of town, and the sweating, knot-handed laborers who were released from the factories at odd hours.

 

Everything was hard.  Everything was poor, or rich.  Dirty.  Big, but densely populated, like an overlarge nest of rats.

 

But it was freedom, and Sherlock felt nothing but relief washing over him with each day that he went to dinner wearing the same clothes he’d put on that morning, each day he didn’t feel the crushing weight of the familial burden on his shoulders.  He could spit in the streets if he wanted to.  He didn’t, but he could.

 

And after eighty-four days, just eighty-four days, he’d been pulled back in.  Summoned, no doubt through his brother’s connections with the British government, to this warehouse by the fish market on the Hudson to be interrogated.  But if he’d been found, what more could Scotland Yard’s finest have to attend to before sending him straight to Mycroft’s new, American home?

 

The police assembled around him were a special task force, and he recognized them all:  Sgt. Anderson, a man not quite handsome or intelligent enough to be as snooty as he was; Sgt. Sally Donovan—good-looking, but sharp-tongued and rude, perhaps trying to prove herself as a female officer; and leading the pack, Detective Inspector Gregson Lestrade, who was not at all stupid, but who had never seemed the type to be able to put two and two together without help.

 

Anderson and Donovan had absconded to the far corners of the room, arms folded across their chests.  Their smug, closed-mouth smiles matched in a Tweedledee, Tweedledum sort of way that gave Sherlock’s eyebrows cause to jump briefly.

 

The DI looked just as tired as Sherlock.  His shirt was unbuttoned in the stifling June New York heat.  He ran a hand over his eyes and grunted a sigh.  “Please, Sherlock.  You’ve helped us with cases before, and we need you now.”

 

“Come all the way to America just for my help, Inspector?  I’m charmed,” Sherlock drawled.  His eyes darted over Lestrade’s form.  He’d recently been at sea, unpleasantly so, and the heady fish smell, lack of sleep, and sweltering heat weren’t helping matters.

 

“This isn’t about Mycroft.”  Lestrade’s eyes widened in brief panic, and he corrected, “’The elder Mr. Holmes,’ I mean.  Forgive me.”

 

Sherlock noticed.  “Of course.”  He sat in silence for a brief moment.  “What exactly are you searching for, then?”  It wasn’t him, of course not.  Silly.

 

Donovan and Anderson exchanged looks and shifted their shoulders; Lestrade stiffened.

 

“It’s a diamond.  A very expensive diamond.  Worth five million American dollars.”

 

Sherlock cast his eyes down at the mention of the rock, took in a small amount of air through his nostrils.  “And you think I can help you find it?”  He looked back into Lestrade’s face, finding shaky confidence where he expected desperation.  Lestrade had something.

 

“Well,” Anderson piped up from his corner, “you were the last one to wear it.”  He was smirking.

 

Sherlock knew.  It was impossible.  How could they have gotten hold of the drawing?

 

Lestrade glanced back at Anderson, then waved him over with a small grimace.  Anderson approached, unrolled a very familiar piece of cardstock, and anchored it with his fingertips on the edges of the wood table in front of Sherlock.

 

It was John’s drawing.

 

His chest suddenly felt very empty.  Cold.  Sherlock quickly composed himself and waved the picture away.  “Not exactly what you’d call evidence.”  His voice sharper now.

 

“What d’you mean?”  The desperation was back in Lestrade’s eyes, and Sherlock felt a surge of complacency in that.  “That’s you, isn’t it? And there’s the diamond.”  He pointed, and Sherlock couldn’t help but look.  Not at Lestrade’s fingers.  The signature.

 

“That’s a _likeness_ of me, as well as a likeness of the diamond.  Do I have to tell you people everything?”  Sherlock glared up at them, but met only level stares.  He sighed.

  
“Fine.  It is me.”

 

Donovan drew near the table.  Her eyes darted over the charcoal version of Sherlock, then slid over his physical form.  “Embellished a bit,” she remarked.

 

He refused to dignify her comment with a reply, instead crossing his legs and closing his eyes.  “I don’t have it.”

 

Lestrade seemed to be unable to decide whether to be ecstatic or defeated.  He pulled up a chair, across the table from Sherlock, and pursed his lips.  “Do you know where it is, then?” he asked, voice tentative with hope.

 

“I can tell you how I came about it, and where it may be.”  He was ready for this.  _JW.  14 APR 1912._

 

The police officers crowded even closer around him.

 

He waited, testing his audience.  If a beetle tripped, they would have heard it.

 

“Take out a pen and paper, then, one of you.  Unless you think you can memorize this,” he added, somewhat venomous.

 

Lestrade produced the items, but shoved them into Donovan’s hands.  She looked affronted.  The prospect of completing their mission and getting to go back home, however, seemed to hold more interest to her than whatever feminist problems had arisen for her.

 

“And do turn around, Anderson.  You’re blocking my memories.”

 

Anderson’s brow furrowed.  “What?”

 

Lestrade’s shoulders rose and fell slowly.  “Do as he says, Anderson, please.”

 

As Anderson’s face disappeared in a 180-degree turn, the corners of the drawing curling inward, Sherlock allowed Donovan and Lestrade a small smile.  It was nice not to have to look at Anderson’s beak of a nose or beady eyes for a bit.

 

“It’s been… eighty-four days.”

 

“That’s all right,” Lestrade replied, giving a nod of encouragement.  “Take your time—tell us all you can remember.”

 

Sherlock’s glare was halfhearted.  “Do you want to hear this or not, Inspector?

 

Lestrade’s cheeks colored and he blinked.  “Sorry.”

 

With a hand through his curls, Sherlock continued.  “It’s been eighty-four days.  And I can still smell the fresh paint.”


	2. 10 April, 1912--Port of Liverpool, Southampton, England

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Off hiatus! And to celebrate, enter Sherlock's (somehow all-encompassing) memories of the events from 84 days ago.

                _10 April, 1912.  Port of Liverpool, Southampton, England._

_  
_

                People bustled around the docks like ants thrown off a scent trail.  Sherlock did little to hide his look of disdain from the other occupants of his vehicle.  It was an automobile; new, expensive.  Like everything his fiancé pushed at him in his numerous attempts to impress him.

 

                James—“Jim,” he’d said to Sherlock, upon their introduction, “I’d like my future husband to call me by name”—Moriarty was born and raised in Ireland by his mother.  His father, an American steel tycoon, had arranged both his engagement to Sherlock, as well as a very large societal wedding in Boston.

 

                Sherlock stared out the window at the crowds.  The bustling throng of multi-lingual masses as they headed through the lice inspection station, scolded their children, hugged thinning shawls about their shoulders, and other common activities was much more pleasant to look at than his fellow automobile passengers.

 

                To his right sat Mycroft.  His older brother, Mycroft had taken care of Sherlock and, as he so often proclaimed, had “held the Holmeses together,” since the death of Mummy Holmes.  Apparently, holding together a family had a side-effect of forever projecting a long-suffering, priggish look.

 

                No one had been happier about his engagement to Jim than Mycroft, who had personally seen to it that Sherlock no longer owned any clothing that his fiancé would dislike.  He had taken it upon himself to stack instructional books ( _Duties and Privileges:  A Husband’s Worth_ , _Cooking and Baking in the Twentieth Century, Health, Husbandry, and Handicraft,_ among countless others) in piles outside Sherlock’s bedroom when he had begun to get locked-out, and had even taught him, though it took hours and much protest from Sherlock, how to carry himself “correctly.”

 

                Sebastian Moran, Jim’s brute of a bodyguard, loomed across from Mycroft with a look that said he was uncomfortable in a suit.  The man spoke with the Queen’s English accent indicative of high society, like Mycroft, but he smoked like a ruffian, and his chin was haunted by perpetual blond stubble.  Moran was some sort of hybrid creature—the love-child of a back-alley thug and a prudish English duchess.  He set Sherlock on edge, and only served as further proof of what he thought of Jim.

 

                Directly across from Sherlock, Jim’s lips spread into a wide grin.  There was something about his smile that gave a stage-whisper of, “Danger,” each time Jim saw fit to grace Sherlock with it.  It was eerie—not forced, but off, as though he had learned to smile by watching the movements of others.

 

                Jim had been attempting to get Sherlock’s attention for the duration of the car trip, but Sherlock had been pointedly ignoring him.  Now that he’d accidentally caught Jim’s eye, Sherlock wrinkled his nose and went back to looking at the lower class through the window.

 

                He could almost feel Jim’s face fall from across the car.  The energy changed like a whipcrack.  Moran’s eyes went to Jim, who didn’t bother to meet his gaze.  Mycroft nudged Sherlock, directed a small smile in Jim’s direction.

 

                Jim brightened quickly, waving it away.  Moran relaxed.  Mycroft didn’t.

 

                As soon as the auto pulled to a stop, Sherlock lifted the inside door handle and exited.  He refused Jim’s delicately offered hand, dropped heavily onto cobblestone.

 

                The ship was magnificent.  The height of opulence; he’d been informed that it contained a gymnasium, a swimming pool, and multiple libraries, among other time-fillers Sherlock felt were unnecessary for a sea voyage.  He pinched the ear-flaps of his deerstalker to keep it steady on his head as a breeze kicked up around the port.  Salt air whispered against Sherlock’s cheekbones, and he closed his eyes.

 

                It should’ve felt freeing.  It was stifling.  The _Titanic_ , in all her majestic, gleaming newness, was a glorified slave ship.  The engagement ring Jim had given him was as good as a pair of handcuffs.

 

                He felt a presence at his side—namely, at about earlobe-height.  He knew it was Jim, and something in his face snapped to passive.  Sherlock wasn’t sure what it had been before.

 

                “I don’t see what all the fuss is about.  It doesn’t look much bigger than the _Mauritania_ ,” Sherlock drawled.  He attempted to shake his arm free of the thin fingers that gripped his elbow with a viselike hold, to no avail.

 

                Jim scoffed.  “You can be blasé about some things, Sherlock, but not about _Titanic_.  It’s at least a hundred feet longer than the _Mauritania_ , and far more luxurious.”  He relaxed his grip on Sherlock’s elbow, just enough to continue the feeling of entrapment.  “Your brother is a difficult man to please, Mycroft.”

 

                Sherlock didn’t look in Jim’s direction, but he felt a weight against his side as Jim leaned against him.  A pressure at his back—Jim’s arm shifting from Sherlock’s arm to curl around his torso.  He stiffened faintly in the spine—not enough to alert Mycroft, but enough to hopefully dissuade Jim’s encroachment of his personal space.

 

                A gamble played and lost.  If anything, Jim’s arm wrapped around him even more tightly.  Sherlock frowned and focused his attention on the line of steerage passengers.  He picked out several languages before Mycroft cut into his field of vision and gave him an icy look that told him to behave himself.  Apparently his brother had noticed the stiffening of his back after all.

 

                Mycroft’s steely gaze melted into a beguiling smile directed first at Jim, then to the ship.  He steepled his fingers and gave a light sigh.  “Simply lovely vessel.”

 

                Sherlock could see through the veil of polite awe Mycroft was projecting.  He was almost certainly wondering if there would be a good selection of cakes on board.

 

                Thus began a general movement of their party in the direction of the gangplank.  Jim escorted Sherlock with a steady hand and a winning smile.

 

Moran trailed behind and tugged a cigarette from the silver case in his coat as one of the ship’s officers approached him.

 

“The loading and unloading of luggage is the responsibility of the _passengers_ , Sir.”  He was a young man, mid-twenties.  Had to have been his first time with White Star.  But his thick, auburn mustache said he was all business.

 

Moran ran a hand over the bottom portion of his face, frowned a bit at the stubble there.  It was no match for such facial hair as this officer possessed, and he cursed Jim for making him shave.  “Yeah?”

 

The officer’s mustache ruffled a bit in frustration.  Sebastian searched his pockets for a match to keep himself from staring in open admiration.  “Yes, Sir.  I suggest you call them back, unless you plan on loading that vehicle full of steamer trunks onto the vessel yourself.”

 

 As the man spoke, Sebastian held a match to one of his shined-up coat buttons and struck it.  He cupped his hand around the flame against the sea air as he lit his cigarette.  The officer’s lower lip curled against the base of his mustache before falling open in shock.

 

Before the officer had a chance to politely call Moran out on his behavior, Sebastian reached into his jacket to fetch a thick billfold.  He shifted the fag to the corner of his mouth, blowing smoke into the wind as he ran his thumb across a couple of fifty-pound notes, which he shoved into the other man’s coat pocket.

 

Moran clapped a hand on the officer’s shoulder, pointed in the direction of the car.  “I’m sure your men are perfectly capable.  That lot requires distribution amongst cabins B-fifty-two, fifty-four, and fifty-six,”  he said, and received a hasty nod in answer as the young man waved a few deckhands over to assist him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think so far. The shifts in POV will happen all the time. They do in the movie, anyway. This way, you get more story than if I stuck only to what Sherlock witnessed. John in the next chapter :)


End file.
